OK, so my wife and I have been playing a lot of Nocturne IRL on the table. We've been working through a lot of questions, and figuring out how to track actions with Conclave and such, and generally working it out. But...finally we stumbled on a question I don't know the answer for, and could not find it in the forum. So...this is the first question I have needed to post:

What is the proper sequence of when the Locusts Hex would take effect when you gain a Cursed Village with Tracker in play, and you would like to top deck the Cursed Village with Tracker. Here was the situation...

It is Night phase.You have a Tracker in play from the Action phase.You play a Vampire.You gain a Cursed Village.You reveal the Locusts Hex.

You would like to top deck the Cursed Village, but not if it is going to be trashed by the Locusts.Which effect happens first? Does the Locusts Hex first trash the current card on top of the deck before the Cursed Village is placed there?...OR...Does the Tracker effect first place the Cursed Village on top of the deck to be trashed by the Locusts? Do you have a choice of the sequence?

Maybe we've been playing too long and Nocturne is frying my brain, but I'm stumped on this one. There is probably a generic answer somewhere that has to do with how to resolve the sequence of multiple effects, but I can't seem to sort this one out...

The general rule is that if two or more things are happening at the same time, you get to pick what order they go in.

It's possible that these things aren't happening at exactly the same time so the above rule wouldn't apply.

Thanks for reply. I was thinking that it was the player's choice if multiple effects are occurring, but couldn't seem to find it in writing easily...I think I have seen it before. Was hoping to get confirmation that for this specific situation the choice option applies...

Note that if you gain a Cursed Village and reveal the Hex, you can't choose to do something else before the Hex resolves. You have to make the decision before flipping the Hex.

OK...thanks - I had not thought of that! It makes sense because you would have revealed information about the Hex that could impact your decision about whether to use the Tracker to top deck the card. I played a few test games online to see how Tracker/Cursed Village was handled, and it basically seemed like I could choose either to top deck first, or to receive the Hex first. If I chose to receive the Hex first, I was afterwards still able to top deck the card for all the Hexes I tested except for War and Locusts which need to reveal card(s) from the top of the deck and therefore apparently invoked the Lose Track rule where the Cursed Village had already been "moved" (presumably to the discard pile) and therefore could not be top decked. So the decision you have to make is not whether to top deck, but whether to first top deck Blessed Village and then receive the Hex, or to first receive the Hex and then take your chance that you may not be able to top deck afterwards if you hit a Hex that would cause the Blessed Village to be lost track of...whew...looking forward to explaining that reasoning to casual game player friends ; ) I assume similar situations might occur with Blessed Village and Boons that force drawing or revealing cards...but I'll think about that later...

OK...thanks - I had not thought of that! It makes sense because you would have revealed information about the Hex that could impact your decision about whether to use the Tracker to top deck the card.

To me, it makes more sense if you think in these terms:

When two things happen to you at once, you pick the order. But having chosen one you must do it completely before doing any part of the other. You can't choose to start one, pause, do the other then go back and finish the first.

OK...thanks - I had not thought of that! It makes sense because you would have revealed information about the Hex that could impact your decision about whether to use the Tracker to top deck the card.

To me, it makes more sense if you think in these terms:

When two things happen to you at once, you pick the order. But having chosen one you must do it completely before doing any part of the other. You can't choose to start one, pause, do the other then go back and finish the first.

Thanks crj! That is very concise and easy to remember - and to explain it to other players. I have played so much Dominion that I should have recalled that, and it sounds pretty close to what Donald originally wrote.

So now I completely understand the way to play multiple effects, and their possible order! ; )

I was though still having a bit of trouble understanding the flow of play with Hexes that invoked the Lose Track rule, so I went back online and played quite a few games buying Cursed Villages with a Tracker in play, where I would always choose to receive the Hex first rather than the top deck option. At first I was a little confused that the same Hex (e.g. War) might sometimes allow the top decking afterwards, while other times it would lose track either because the Blessed Village was "covered up", or "moved". But as I carefully watched the deck and discard pile I realized that online play does something for us which we sometimes tend to skip over in play on the table. In online play, the gained card always goes first into the discard pile (unless otherwise stated on the card), and then Tracker expects to find it there on top of the discard pile if you choose to select the top deck option. On the table I'm afraid we had gotten sloppy and were often skipping that gain-to-the-discard-pile step, and were simply gaining the card directly to the top of our deck when Tracker was in play. Mostly that works because you don't have a 2nd effect happening at the same time, but in cases like Blessed Village it can cause real confusion. I know you know this - just sharing my thoughts with any other players who might struggle with this.

So in addition to your advice that you can choose the order of multiple effects happening at the same time, but have to completely resolve one effect before moving on to the next, I would add that for IRL games it is essential to remember that gained cards always go first to the discard pile unless otherwise stated - to avoid confusion with cards like Blessed Village. Thx again for setting me on the right course to sorting this out. Among my friends and family I'm the Dominion authority, and need to be able to explain rules like this clearly and concisely, so I appreciate the help!

It sounds like Locusts caused a card to be gained, which covered up the Blessed Village, causing it to be lost track of. When it comes to War, as far as I can think it must be that it made you shuffle your discard pile because it didn't find a $3/$4-cost card in your deck, causing Blessed Village to be shuffled in and obviously lost track of. So whenever War does find a $3/$4-cost card in your deck, Blessed Village is not lost track of.

You're right about cards already having been moved to the discard pile (or your hand or on your deck if it was gained there instead) at the point when Tracker lets you move it. This is also the case with Watchtower, Royal Seal and Travelling Fair.